Seaford veteran remembers years as Air Force pilot

SEAFORD— — Otto Wagner's war experiences are distant memories that he seldom thinks of these days, but he says that doesn't stop other people's curiosity.

"I was very young," said Wagner, a Seaford resident. "It did not bother me. I hated to see my friends be shot out of the sky, but that happened all the time in World War II, especially in the early days."

Wagner turned 90 on Jan. 6 and received a surprise birthday cake at the monthly Seaford Yacht Club dinner Jan. 15.

Half of his 32-year career was spent overseas and he served in Africa, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Hawaii and Vietnam.

Wagner grew up in Waco, Texas. As a boy he loved airplanes and did everything from building model planes to buying used magazines about airplanes for a nickel, and visiting the airfield frequently.

A year after World War II started in 1941, Wagner joined the U.S. Army Air Corps Aviation Cadet program. He and a buddy were so anxious to fly big time bomber planes, they swapped orders with another pair of pilots and soon were flying brand new B-24 bombers overseas.

Wagner flew 50 missions with the 98th Bomb Group, receiving at least minor damage to his aircraft each time they took on major targets, he said. Twice his aircraft received major damage, with him making a forced landing to barely get back across the front lines in Italy the first time.

The second time, Wagner's plane was at 30,000 feet over Munich, Germany. Two engines were out, holes were in the airplane, the fuel was leaking out and the right side of the airplane was covered with oil, Wagner said.

Despite the real danger of an explosion because of all the spilled fuel, the airmen agreed not to parachute out and abandon the plane because one of the men was trapped inside.

"We couldn't quite maintain altitude, but with two engines going we made it back to flat levels of southern Yugoslavia," he said. "At that time the Germans were occupying Yugoslavia, but they didn't have enough troops except to occupy the main towns and the main roads. The rest of the country was controlled by the partisans.

"Well, we made a forced landing there and the partisans took us to a red dirt airfield. It was very dusty, that three or four British hurricanes were flying out of, bombing the German convoys on the main roads."

The visitors were shown to a B-24 that had been damaged and made a landing earlier, and had been repaired.

"They said if you want it, take it," Wagner said. "So I looked it over and thought, hell, it ought to fly. It ran up pretty good. I asked the crew if they wanted to go, and they decided yes they'd go. So we took off and flew back to our home base in a different airplane than we took off from, which was a little strange."

Wagner flew in the Berlin airlift. At Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, a couple of times he filled in for a member of the Air Force Thunderbirds, which was a training command acrobatic team. In 1964 he went to Vietnam as one of the U.S. advisers, flew 80 missions and earned a Purple Heart after being wounded.